Celebrate Phil Collins Day with a New Song Named After Phil Collins

What are your plans for Friday (Feb. 15)? You're going to need to cancel them, because we've just been informed that it's Phil Collins Day.

But seriously, Phil Collins Day is a real thing -- it even has its own official website, as well as a daylong celebration, held annually in New York's Rockaway neighborhood. In fact, it's been going on since at least 2007, when attendees showed their Philpreciation by holding a 'Face Value' dance party. The following year, the theme was Post No Phils, with Jacket Required following in 2009, Come Get Your Phil in 2010, an amazing-looking Phil Collins Day Parade in 2011, and a 'Testify' confessional booth in 2012.

It might sound like a frivolous thing, but there's actually a serious side to Phil Collins Day. This year's theme, inspired by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy last fall, is Take Me Home, featuring a come-one, come-all drum circle in which participants will "celebrate our survival while dancing by the sea." As the festival's organizer put it in an email to Gothamist, "We were, like the majority of the peninsula, hit pretty badly by the storm; house destroyed, lost all of my tools, garden, etc. And the past three months have been one of recovery and rebuilding. Rockaway is strong. And it is the resilience of this community that keeps us all together."

In other Phil Collins-related news, the Australian duo Big Scary is celebrating Phil Collins Day this year with the release of their new single, the aptly titled 'Phil Collins.' Have a listen to the track, embedded below.